Things I Should Say But Write Instead

So, unlike the post about the house, this post about health is a bit more of a standalone issue although it still impacts and is impacted by bits of the other three issues. In 2015 I was around 70kg with a body fat of around 16%. Pretty good and made even better by the fact that I was very unhealthy throughout most of my twenties, despite still being quite sporty.

Since 2013 I’ve been fortunate to work for a company with a healthy living programme which provides very good nutritional advice and since 2014 I’ve been in a relationship with an NHS Dietician. This lead to me getting in the shape of my life (barring maybe my teenage years).

 Sadly, now I sit here at close to 80kg and a body fat of around 21%. It’s easy to saw how it’s happened but maybe the why is a bit more complex. In short, I’ve stopped eating well, started exercising less and consuming a lot more alcohol. I’ve always liked food, but always been fortunate that I like healthy food as much as junk food. Yet I really still eat a lot of junk food! I also go through phases of snacking a lot. I am very disciplined during the day at work with only an apple and yogurt to snack on yet in the evenings I just lose control, eating despite being full. This happens at weekends also. It’s such a habit and I need to stop it. Part of the issue at the moment is a cupboard full of post-Christmas snacks which I seem to be eating relentlessly in a pathetic attempt to almost get them out the house.

 Exercise is a strange one. I’ve always loved sport and the buzz of exercise and that buzz is even greater when you know you’re in good shape. I’ve always been happy exercising alone usually jogging or doing my own HIIT sessions but again, a complete loss of motivation and inability to stick to a plan for longer than a fortnight at the moment. I’m sure I can overcome my diet/exercise issues but the lack of a starting point seems to be a worry. As the saying goes, the first step is the hardest!

 Alcohol. Now this is the biggie and could almost have a post to itself. I have an unhealthy and unpredictable relationship with alcohol. Drinking as a kid never bothered or appealed to me. As a teenager I played sport and hung out with friends who did the same. Cider at the park was never on my radar. Ditto at university, admittedly I’d binge drink on the one night a week we went out but if we went to a pub to watch a game I could still just have a coke and I rarely drunk in the house. Ditto in my first house with my now-ex-wife. Rarely any booze and if there was then 4 bottles of Bud could get me through a weekend. When my marriage ended I moved home to my mum’s whilst she’d drink in the house and I started to follow, it was barely more than a couple of beers/wines at the weekend. I guess writing it all down like this makes me realise for the first time that my acceptance of alcohol was loosening in everyday life. At 31 (I think!) I moved into my own place and since then (albeit in peaks and troughs) my alcohol consumption has increased a lot. I’m doing Dry January at the moment and to set my base drinking levels I think I put 33 drinks a week – a combination of beer and wine. Yikes.

 The underlying psychological reason for this I’m unsure of. I was never a social drinker and still don’t go out a lot so I consume a lot in the house. Maybe because of this I don’t realise how much I’m drinking as I don’t get “giddy drunk” like you do on a night out and know when to stop. Sat in front of a TV drinking is a different type of drunk. I can do decent periods of time without a drink. I did 20-something days in October as part of Sober October before (unusually) social commitments got in the way and I’m doing Dry January now without drama (even including three days at the end of December). I’d guess one of the issues is that I have so many triggers to drink – a stressful day at work, a day of intense housework, a sunny day, sport on the TV, cooking a certain meal. All these things seem to give me the sliver of an excuse that I need. Strangely, I’m different at the moment (maybe for reasons I’ll touch on in the other two parts of my Big Four) in that the cravings aren’t even there. My issue is usually my 45 minute drive home. At this point I’ll be thinking about what I’m doing in the evening and does this require an accompanying drink that I’d need to stop off and buy. I find if I can go the first half hour in the house without a drink then I’m fine for the evening. I don’t know if it’s the fact I’ve committed to Dry January that these thoughts aren’t even in my head at the moment but long may it continue. I just need to make sure that the 1st February doesn’t become a target to get to and have a drink!

 So I realise I’ve just listed the three reasons for my health concerns at this point without really a plan to tackle them other than Dry January but this post was more about continuing to list my issues at the moment rather than a plan of attack. I plan on writing the other two blog posts soon about work and relationships and then maybe one more post to describe how they all link together before really using this blog as a device to attack the issues and achieve my 2015 self!

Well I’ve lost a bit of motivation for the blog already but seeing as how t was all about having a place to vent/voice my troubles then I suppose in some ways its not a bad thing. However, I don’t want to lose the habit already so I’ll make my second post almost a week after my first and as mentioned below, cover one of the four pressing issues of my life entering 2018. I’ll pick one of the lesser ones as I don’t have the motivation (or need) to write a big one atm.

 In that case, I’ll go.......house!

 So, my house is ok. No better. It’s fairly old, a decent size, cheap but a bit tatty. I’ve done a few things to it myself and had a few things done to it professionally. Due to the market and the area it hasn’t changed in value much. However, due to a bit of an inheritance when my dad died in 2009 I bought it on a 60% mortgage so by default there’s a fair bit of equity in the house.

 Recently I’ve started to become a bit unhappy with it. It’s a bit cold at times, the kitchen and bathroom have seen better days and there’s a fairly large utility area going to waste which could be massively improved upon. Due to the large deposit, my mortgage payments are quite low meaning should I want to improve the house I have a decent chance to get some capital by remortgaging and not to a massive financial detriment to myself.

 But do I want to?

 The three scenarios seem to be:

-          Remortgage to raise money tom improve the kitchen and/or bathroom and possibly the utility area.

-          Put up my mortgage payments on a shorter mortgage on a principle of financial responsibility and be mortgage free pre-50.

-          Leave it, be financially comfortable in a house I don’t love but don’t hate.

Now, rather unhelpfully, the “job” and “relationship” bits of the equation come into play here and as I haven’t gone into those details as yet it’s hard to go into a lot of detail for my choice of the options above! Anyway, my current decision (at least I can make one in regards to this bit of the big four!) is the third one. Make the best of the situation to give me flexibility around the other, possibly bigger calls.

 Not the juiciest post, but there’s more interesting stuff to come in the other three!

OK, so I must have had this blog for four or so years as I just logged on for the first time in ages as when I checked who I was following, I could see that some blogs that I was following haven’t been updated in that long! In that period I’d made a whopping THREE posts. None of them particularly earth shattering so I’ve decided to start again with the same user name but completely new posts and new blogs to follow.

 So, congratulations to anyone reading this – you’ve started 2018 as an amateur psychiatrist by listening to my ramblings. The purpose for the blog now is the same as it was then, self improvement through the medium of “talking” about my problems. I don’t need feedback (although it would be nice) but this is the closest I come to talking about my problems. It’s not that I don’t have anyone to communicate with verbally face-to-face, I just have a bit of cowardice about judgements I may receive from people close to me. Not that I would value feedback (positive or negative) less from any of you lot, just that I could maybe live with it better. I wouldn’t ignore it per se, just that it wouldn’t be hanging over me every time I met up with a friend/or relative.

 I’m sure there are many blogs being started today, some with the same purpose as this one. A lot of these probably follow the dreaded mantra “new year, new me” and mine is based on that. But with one key difference. My resolution for 2018 is “New Year, Old Me”. I liked where my life was in 2016 and loved where it was in 2015 and I need to get back to that. To add a bit of background, I’m 37 and have a decent office based job for a nice company with great colleagues. I have a 10 year old son from a marriage that ended in 2008 but remain on good terms with my ex and see my son regularly. I live with my girlfriend of three-and-a-half years.

 I hear you ask – “what was so great about 2015 and 2016?” and “what’s changed?”

 Quite a bit, and I’m struggling to deal with a lot of it. Without sounding horribly naive I expected my life to settle down as it went on and I thought I was at a point a couple of years ago where I’d got the big things sorted – relationship, job, house, health.

 Each one of those four points above are at a pivotal point for me. They all declined quite sharply in 2017 and without being overly dramatic I can’t afford to let the same happen in 2018. The next four posts will cover each of the points in a bit of detail so I can give them the right amount of detail and I didn’t want to make my first post overly wordy. Plus it’ll get me writing more regularly which I’m looking forward to. I’ve read a couple of posts from “proper” writers who recommend writing as often as possible, not always for others eyes but more to develop a style. So hopefully you’ll be hearing more from me over the next week or so.